


Thank You for Helping Us to Help Others

by OntheStraightandNarrow



Category: Portal (Video Game), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Dialogue taken from game, GLaDOS dialogue, Gen, Maybe eventual NewtxThomas, Portal 1, Portal AU, Portals, Testing - Freeform, Thomas talking to himself, Trapped, W.I.C.K.E.D, Wiped Memory, maze runner - Freeform, over describing Newt, portal gun - Freeform, sorry monologue, the cutie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2625662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OntheStraightandNarrow/pseuds/OntheStraightandNarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello, subject A2.<br/>“Welcome to the Killzone Experiment Department of W.I.C. We understand that you may be confused, but do not worry. You will not need your memories for the following tests. Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the tests. The portal will open in three … two ... one."<br/>A soft bloop sounded and a wide orange ring appeared in the center of the doorway of the box. Thomas jumped as it popped in, and he stared at it.<br/>“Oh my god.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You for Helping Us to Help Others

He began his new life standing up, and his eyes flew open.

He grimaced at the harsh whiteness stabbing his eyes and stumbled back, disorientated. His back hit a wall, it flexed a bit under the force, much quicker than he had anticipated and he flung out his arms to steady himself, eyes tightly shut. His right hand slammed into another wall and he hissed in pain, recoiling in on himself.

Breathing hard, he cracked open his eyes to slits, and squinted at his surroundings.

His eyes adjusted quickly, and his breathing started to slow when he was able to make sense of his world.

He was trapped in a clear box, and he could see through to the paneled white walls on the other side of the windows. When he looked up, he was almost blinded by the powerful light globe shining on him, but he noticed that there wasn’t a roof on his clear box, just the white panels of the ceiling above. There was a white panel to his right, like a doorway, yet there was no door. It was much too bright. Opposite him was a cocoon-like bench, with a pillow and sheets. A bed. Next to the bed was a toilet. It didn’t smell like it had been used recently.

Above the “doorway” there was a timer, black digits counting down from 54 seconds.

53.

52.

51.

There was a faint tinny tune sounding to his left, eerily upbeat.

He turned towards it, and looked at the semicircle-like object. A radio, his brain supplied. His heart started to beat quicker when he realized he didn’t know how he knew that, couldn’t remember where he’d seen one before, and that he couldn’t remember much at all.

He started gasping in breaths when he tried to remember something, anything, a memory, a face, a name -

Thomas.

Thomas.

He clung to it because it was his name, he knew it, and he whispered it over and over again. “Thomas, Thomas, Thomas…”

His voice quickly faded into nothing.

The tune from the radio was too cheerful, making Thomas want to crawl out of his skin and he snatched the radio up, seeing no button to make it shut up and threw it out of his little clear cage.

It bounced against a white wall and clattered back to the box, still playing.

Thomas slammed his fists against the wall, some sort of tempered glass. “Get me out of here! Someone help me!”

He banged again, but got no response. He leaned his head against the glass, and heaved in a huge, wracking sob.

Then a voice resonated throughout the room.

“Hello, subject A2.”

Thomas whirled around, seeing no one until he realized that the voice was robotic, artificial and he glared at the radio again, but the voice wasn’t coming from there.

“Welcome to the Killzone Experiment Department of W.I.C,” the voice was female and had a clipped accent, “We understand that you may be confused, but do not worry. You will not need your memories for the following tests.”

The reassurance the Voice gave only served to make Thomas panic further.

“Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the tests. The portal will open in three …” The voice was in sync with the timer above the doorway.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Thomas shouted.

“Two…”

“What is this place!?!”

“One.”

A soft bloop, like a tap dripping, sounded and a wide orange ring appeared in the center of the doorway of the box. Thomas jumped as it popped in, and he stared at it.

“A mirror?” He murmured.

No, it wasn’t a mirror, he couldn’t see his reflection, but he did see himself all the same. It was as if he were standing outside of the transparent box and looking in.

He turned his head to the right, and saw a large blue ring on a panel on the walls outside his box and he could see himself in that one too, except he could see the front of himself now.

He looked back to the orange ring.

“Portal…”

He reached a hand out towards the ring, and instead of hitting something solid, his hand went straight through. Encouraged, he stepped through the portal and onto the concrete floor of the room. He moved forward and looked behind him, now at the blue ring, and then at the box that had had him trapped.

“Oh my god.”

A loud mechanical hiss made Thomas whirl around to see a circular door open, a flickering white board next to it saying “Test 01.”

He looked back to the portal behind him, sticking his hand through it, and passing through it a few more times. He tried touching the edge, and could only describe the feeling as touching solid water, slick and moving, yet unyielding.

He turned back around to the circular doorway and Thomas stepped cautiously into the room of Test 01.

The room was white, with a massive red button in the floor of the center of the room. Stepping on the button caused the door on the other side of the room to open, making the blue line connecting the button to the door to light up orange. He watched a large cube drop from a contraption in the ceiling. As he stepped off the button the door closed again.

The voice sounded throughout the room, and Thomas glanced up, searching for speakers. (How did he know what speakers looked like? He had no memory of ever using one; yet, he knew what they generally looked like. He couldn’t grasp a single memory and it was infuriating.) There weren’t any that he could see.

“The weighted storage cube will be available to help you to complete the tests.”

The cube was heavy, Thomas estimated that it was about twenty kilograms, and easily pressed the button down, holding the door open for Thomas to walk through.

Up ahead he saw a walkway leading to what looked like a lift, with a shimmering curtain of energy in front of the entrance. He jumped when the robotic voice suddenly burst in on the eerie silence, much louder than before.

“Please proceed to the Chamberlock. However, note the incandescent particle field across the exit. This W.I .C.K.E.D Emancipation Grill will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it. For instance, the W.I.C.K.E.D Weighted Storage Cube.”

Thomas halted before touching the curtain of energy when he heard the word “vaporize”. He glanced around, searching for any way to test the field. The area was spotless, so he took the end of his orange jumpsuit and pushed it into the particle field, feeling a little reassured when it didn’t disintegrate.

“I’m authorized, aren’t I?” Thomas asked the walls, and stepped through the particle field.

The lift, or Chamberlock, activated automatically as soon as he stepped into it, the chamber humming as it descended. Or ascended, Thomas couldn’t tell. Perhaps it didn’t move at all since he couldn’t feel any movement.

The doors hissed open again, giving Thomas a view of another white tiled room with multiple levels. In the center of the room was a rotating pedestal, with a sleek looking object placed upon it. A mild mechanic hissing sound, like energy was being sucked in, accompanied the sudden flash of light shooting out of the object and opening a portal on another of those ‘doorways’. There was a floor to ceiling pane of glass between him and the object and there was a large glowing sign ‘Test 02’ on his left, and a closed set of doors on his right.

With another hiss the blue portal disappeared and another flash of light was shot out, this time on the right side of the room.

“Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol but is an unintended side-effect of the Emancipation Grill, which may, in semi-rare cases emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth.”

“What?” squeaked Thomas, quickly running his tongue over his teeth. Thankfully, everything felt normal.

The Voice didn’t say any more, but the doors to his right opened, and he made his way down a set of stairs and through a sudden portal that shot through a small opening from the object, leading him to a ledge above the sunk-in room of the pedestal, with another set of closed doors on his right.

This time, the doors didn’t open.

Could he take the object?

Thomas looked down on the gun shooting portals, knowing that if he jumped down there, he wouldn’t be able to climb back out of what looked like a three meter drop. But there were always the portals; he could escape through them.

He dangled his feet over the lip of the ledge, sliding forward and pivoting his torso around so the edge of the wall was digging into his stomach. Pulling his hands in towards his body and resting one forearm along the edge and the other hand braced beside it, he lowered himself further, his arms straining until he was hanging only by his hands. He glanced down, and dropped, pushing a little away from the wall so when he bent his knees they wouldn’t bang into it.

The gun was still shooting portals when Thomas approached it, cautiously reaching out his hands to take it. Something niggled at the back of his head, something he couldn’t remember having seen, that told him to expect some kind of booby trap to spring into action.

When he took the object, muscles tense, he jumped in fright at the sound of the Voice, and a loud hiss, signaling that the doors were now open.

“You are now in possession of the W.I.C.K.E.D Handheld Portal Device. With it, you can create your own portals. These intra dimensional gates have been proven to be completely safe.”

Thomas ran his hands over the portal gun, feeling a series of buttons under the larger white shell of the device.

“The Device, however, has not.”

He froze.

“Do not touch the operational end of The Device. Do not look directly at the operational end of The Device. Do not submerge The Device in liquid, even partially. Under no circumstances should you attempt to use The Device to create portals on non-portal surfaces.”

The end of the Voice’s monologue seemed too abrupt. Thomas waited for further instructions, but none came.

Pressing one of the buttons on the gun, the gun pulsed, shooting out an orange portal. Thomas saw himself in the ‘reflection’ again, as the blue portal was on his left. He pressed the button right next to the first one, this time shooting out a blue portal, making the first portal disappear. He could see himself in both portals as he faced them.

Curious, he walked up and stuck his left hand through the orange portal, seeing it come out of the blue portal. He flexed his fingers and reached over, touching his right elbow. He jerked back, away from the portals, and shivered.

“Weird,” he muttered, stepping over to the other side to get a good view of the ledge that he dropped down from.

He shot a blue portal at the wall behind the ledge, and the orange portal into the wall right next to him. Stepping through it, he saw himself going through the other portal as he landed back on the ledge, the doors to his right now open.

“I am never going to get used to that.”

There was a third button on the portal gun, underneath the two main ones. He pressed it, and both portals disappeared instantly.

The next room was white too, and there was a great chasm in the middle of it. Looking down, Thomas could see that the chasm was filled with a toxic-looking substance, where if it’s brown-green colour didn’t scream dangerous, then the awful bitter smell wafting up certainly did.

Thomas frowned and shot a portal to the opposite end of the room, right next to where he could see the open door that would allow him to progress. He then shot his second portal onto the wall behind him and marveled again at how he could see himself looking at himself through the portal.

He stepped through.

“Easy,” he muttered, and passed through the doorway, the doors instantly hissing shut behind him.

 

Not all of the rooms were white. Thomas discovered that he couldn’t fire portals inside the chamber lock, or at a black shiny covering on the walls in the most irritating places. The rooms quickly became more difficult to get through, including the emancipation grills in the puzzles where he couldn’t shoot a portal through, and a ball of energy that bounced around the walls in search of it’s ‘home’ (a claw-shaped thing that acted as a switch for the closed doors). Once, Thomas let the ball pass close to him, and he could feel the crackling heat coming off of it, indicating that it could vaporize him.

He was near the end of Test 07 when he met his first turret.

Finally managing to reach the platform of the open doorway, Thomas examined the white back of the turret. Remembering the ominous image on the ‘Test 07’ sign of a stick figure being shot by a round spider-like thing (with only three legs), Thomas presumed that if he stepped in front of the red laser coming out of the turret, he would find himself with many more holes than he would want.

Lifting up the turret was easy - it was lighter than one of those cubes - but then Thomas dropped it when suddenly a voice came out of it.

“Put me down!”

The turret started spewing out bullets as it bounced on the ground and Thomas decided to just leg it to the chamber lock. He felt something whiz over his head, and he passed through the emancipation grill, pausing to glance back at the turret still firing bullets erratically. Suddenly his arm flared up in pain, and Thomas saw that the emancipation grill didn’t stop bullets.

He leapt into the elevator, and the doors weren’t closing fast enough, and he was going to get hit somewhere more vital. The gap was closing and he shrunk against the side wall of the elevator. A bullet pinged off the back wall, and finally the doors shut, and the elevator jerked.

Thomas grasped the gun, and listened to the elevator grinding. He gasped in air, chest heaving and felt his legs shaking. He looked down at his arm and felt his stomach heave. On the side of his upper arm were two clean holes, cauterized and perfectly round. The bullet must have exited his arm, passing through only muscle, but it didn’t look like it needed bandaging. It hurt to bend his right arm, pain flashing down to the tips of his fingers.

The elevator stopped moving. Thomas sucked in another huge breath and got ready for what lay ahead next.

The doors didn’t open.

“Hey,” Thomas called, “Hey, open the doors!”

This was much worse.

He got up and hopped from foot to foot, hesitant to knock on the doors lest he make the situation worse, but then reasoned it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

“Come on,” he shot a portal at the door, and it fizzled away, and then banged on them with his good arm, “Come on, let me out of here!”

Nothing happened.

Seated on the ground and cradling his throbbing arm, Thomas estimated that it had been about ten minutes when he heard the elevator noises again, but muffled, as if there was a second elevator shaft next to the one he was in.

He pushed himself up while the noises stopped. The doors hissed open and Thomas instantly saw the elevator opposite him, revealing someone inside.

Thomas froze, locked in eye contact with the boy in the opposite elevator. He looked to be about 14 or 15 years old (except he was much too tall for those ages), with a tousled shock of golden hair, and was so skinny that it looked like a single gust of wind could push him over.

The boy was the first to move, taking his hand off his own portal gun and holding it up in a non-threatening gesture, stepping out of his elevator.

“Alright there?” he said and Thomas was surprised at how deep his voice was, “I’m Newt.”

Even with only four words, Thomas could hear a strong accent smoothing over the boy’s speech.

“Thomas,” he replied.

The boy grinned. “Welcome to the Testing, Greenie.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the first sentence, I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, I just wanted to post this here to say that I was the first to imagine this crossover, and seriously, Portal and The Maze Runner go together so easily. Like, if WICKED built a whole entire moving maze, they could totally pull off Aperture’s testing facilities. And if a flat-trans is possible, then they definitely have the technology for portals. Spoilers, by the way. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it, I took the lazy route and pretty much copied the first few levels of Portal 1, yes I know turrets only turn up in test chamber 16 and I know Chell has long fall boot-things, but I thought that could be something only the Gladers/Runners have access to, rather than the newbies. 
> 
> This is probably only going to stay as a oneshot, simply because I have no idea how I want to write it – is it just Newt and Tommy, or are all the Gladers gonna be there and what are the Grievers going to be? And I’ve only written this much. 
> 
> Unbetad.
> 
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> OtSaN


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